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Topic: Conflict Zone (Read 6978 times)

Conflict Zone

Description:It's 2367,Neo-Terran Front has been crushed,only few ships remain,you're new pilot of the 376th Panthers squadron,GTD Minnow.Your task is clear,destroy every NTF ship you find.They might be desperate,but they won't give up.Two destroyers,three corvettes and six cruisers have been assigned.NTF is outnumbered and outgunned,or is it?

Re: Conflict Zone

Now I haven't played this Final Destination, but just because I'm guessing someone created something similar doesn't mean that should stop other people from doing anything like it afterwards. If that was taken to the extreme, you'd get "Oh, you can't do an escort mission, people have done those before."

It certainly won't stop me if I ever decide to put my own spin on something.

And personally this sounds like something along the lines of something I've pondered about doing before. Not exactly like this or anything, I mean it sounds like two battle groups are going to go head to head and whittle each other down over a series of missions. I'd like to play something like that.

Re: Conflict Zone

Uh, Final Destination is wardog300k's Inferno-based campaign that he is presently working on (you can't miss all the threads in the Inferno sub-board). I think Betrayal's comment is to encourage wardog300k to finish something before he starts another project.

Which I can understand, if I started on every campaign idea I thought of, I'd never get anything done. On the other hand, this does seem a lot smaller scale than Final Destination (6 missions vs... a lot more for FD) so who knows how it will turn out!

Re: Conflict Zone

Normal people believe that if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it isn't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.The difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers is:Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targetsAn optimist sees the glass half full; the pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Normal people believe that if it isn't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it isn't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.The difference between Mechanical Engineers and Civil Engineers is:Mechanical Engineers build weapons. Civil Engineers build targetsAn optimist sees the glass half full; the pessimist sees it half empty. An engineer sees that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

Re: Conflict Zone

So not even a day...should probably put more effort into a campaign before releasing it...food for thought.

That's not really the best way to get more people FREDding, you know...

Wardog - I grabbed Macfies version and played mission one. Here are my initial thoughts:

Orient your briefing grid! This is really easy – rotate the camera so that it's looking roughly down, perpendicular to the grid. Then, go into the “Misc” menu and click “Align Object”.

It's also a good practice to change the initial number of missiles available away from the default “500”. You can make it 480 so that it wont affect the mission, or you can drop it down to the point where the player has to choose how many to use, but don't leave it at the default. Like the briefing orientation, it's a teeny, tiny detail, but it makes the mission feel that much more polished.

Good move opening the first mission with the player facing right into the planet/Arcadia. Making the first image a player sees an interesting one is always good mission design, but often forgotten.

OK, so mission one is very simplistic. Essentially, you've thrown a bunch of ships together into a furball with relatively little in the way of structure or dramatic timing. This doesn't necessarily produce bad missions, and I've done it myself more than once (Hunters in Frontlines is essentially a formless, moving dogfight, but it has the (somewhat) redeeming feature of having multiple challenging targets for the player to engage and a time limit). But these sorts of missions are somewhat restrictive in what you can do with them. Learning to build a mini-narrative into your missions is one of the most important things you can do as a FREDder.

The best way to do that, I think, is to arrange the mission so that the player has a series of tasks to complete, and always has something specific that he should be doing. In this mission, the player has an objective (to kill the Arcadia) but not the tools to do it, so really, it's an escort mission around the Alzaz. But the Alzaz is never really in any danger, and the player never really has much to do.

Here's a few quick changes I'd have made to this mission, so that it has a bit more narrative structure.

1. Make the Splendid a Deimos. That will make the initial engagement a fight, rather than a slaughter, and it means the player can have his first directive – kill the anti capital beams on the Splendid. Since the player will be engaging, give it a wing of defending fighters as well.

2. Once the Splendid is destroyed, the Alzaz turns its attention to the Arcadia. At this point,m the threat against it is supposed to come from bombers. Make that threat more prominent by really emphasizing the bombers presence (several messages about them, and specific player directives to defend the Alzaz against bomb), and give the Deimos (which is a very well defended ship) enough targets in the form of escort fighters (for the bombers) to overwhelm its defences so that some bombs have the chance to slip though.

3. Have the Deimos ignore the freighter, and make its destruction or disabling a secondary objective for the player. If it docks with a cargo container and escapes, the player fails that objective (but not the mission)

4. Next, add some more messages and events that add to the overall sense of narrative. The mission isn't a long one, but there's time for the Deimos to request surrender from the Arcadia – even if it's rebuffed, that will give the mission a bit more character. Messages from command counting down as the hull of the installation drops (maybe at 50, 25 and 10%) can also help there.

5. Finally, delay the arrival of the Rapier until at least another 20 or so seconds after the destruction of the Alzaz. It feels very fake at the moment, too well timed, because it jumps in way too soon after the destruction of the Arcadia.

So those are the first changes I would suggest you make for mission 1. But there's one other big change that deserved it's own section: This mission has no fail conditions! There's currently no way to lose – if the Alzaz is destroyed by bombers, the player will still get the success debrief, because that's the only debrief there is. That's not so bad, though, because this mission is essentially self-playing – that's when a mission is set up in such a way that if the player just flies away, the mission will succeed entirely without his input. You really want to try to avoid building your missions this way – a good mission should be balanced so that if the player does nothing, the mission fails every single time.

In your case, I'd suggest making the bombers more of a threat, and considering the addition of a second hostile warship near the end of the mission to make the Alzaz really sweat. And, of course, changing the debrief to reflect the fact that the Alzaz can die before the Rapier arrives – you'll need at least a success, failure and AWOL debrief (that's the debrief you get if the player leaves before his objectives are complete, before he's been ordered back to base).

So, those are my mission one notes. It's far from the worst first mission I've ever seen (some of my first efforts weren't even this good) but it does need some work. Hopefully, some of my pointers will be able to help you fix it up a bit, and maybe you can apply the lessons to some of your other missions too.

Re: Conflict Zone

OK, so just a quick one about mission 2, because many of the same issues crop up and I don't need to run through them twice. Two new issues, however, that do need to be mentioned.

One is that this mission is extremely short. A destroyer and a cruiser with fighter escort will put down two hostile cruisers in short order, especially with the original FS2 AI. You should be aiming to make your missions at least 5 minutes long - and that's a bare minimum, and only really to be used when missions are intentionally short for storytelling reasons. In most cases, somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes is usually the sweet spot. There are lots of ways to stretch out a mission - a good one in this case might be to lose the Hope entirely, and just have it as an Aeolus chasing two other cruisers towards the node.

Secondly, I didn't really feel like this mission had much of a narrative connection to the last. The command briefing is all about how urgent it is that the GTVA stop the NTF's new super destroyer, and the mission is launching in 20 minutes, and then... there is no super destroyer until after you fulfill your objectives. And then when it does show up, it acts in an almost carbon copy way to the previous mission.

IMO, you should either change the command briefing so that it doesn't seem like the GTVA are expecting to see the destroyer in this mission, or use that command briefing for a mission that's more like Slaying Ravana - a tight, desperate dogfight to kill the dangerous new type of destroyer.

Re: Conflict Zone

1 and 2:The mission is supposed to be everyone slaughtering everyone.Making the Splendid into a Deimos,would create more chalenge,but as far as i can tell,its better to make the beginnig ,,WE ARE THE GODS OF UNIVERSE",and then something happens and it all falls into water,like in FS1,you fight against underpowered Vasudans and then the shivans arrive and kill everyone.Alzaz is still in danger from bombers and crazy Loki pilots engaging the corvette.The mission is made for normal and higher difficulty,where wing of General-piloted Hercs is a threat.Wait till mission 6,that's real BOE type mission with enemies everywhere.

3:Iota is actually supposed to be uncontroled ship parked there,and the turrets are simple AI.

4:I didn't add more messages just because it is a short mission,and for the Jupiter surrendering-SLAUGHTER.

5:Rapier and other destroyer,the Liberty have special super subspace engines that take 2 hours to recharge,and that's the reason it jumped at that moment,not before cause the NTF thinks they can force allies to retreat,however since they fail,they send in a super destroyer.

Mission 2.

It was actually supposed to have the Hecate along with its entire fleet jumping in,destroying the Hope,and then it would be saving the Venturer until it jumps(what it wouldn't be able to).But i decided to make next mission hunting the Hecate.For the narration,same as the above.

If i do a remake of the CZ,which i may do after releasing the FD,i will follow your advice to make it better.

Re: Conflict Zone

Black wolf raises excellent points, I strongly suggest you take his advice, since it is solid. The only thing I'd like to comment on is:

Quote

One is that this mission is extremely short. A destroyer and a cruiser with fighter escort will put down two hostile cruisers in short order, especially with the original FS2 AI. You should be aiming to make your missions at least 5 minutes long - and that's a bare minimum, and only really to be used when missions are intentionally short for storytelling reasons. In most cases, somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes is usually the sweet spot.

I'd say the sweet spot is more between 8 to 12 minutes. Depending on the mission.20 minutes is a long time in Freespace, and dying or failing a mission when you are 15 minutes in can be pretty disheartening.

Re: Conflict Zone

If you make a 20 minute mission, it should have one, maybe two checkpoints, depending on difficulty and presence of time-compress-skippable sections. Failing after 5 minutes of dogfighting then 10 minutes of talking is not quite as bad as failing after 15 minutes of escorting three Faustus from sporadic bomber/assault fighter attack which can't be time-compressed away...ST:R, I'm looking at you (I can't believe people actually liked that mission, clearly they all passed it on their first try).